Courage of falcons

by Holly Lisle

  They met at the Copper-Walls Tavern, Kait bringing Ry from the dock, Dùghall leading Ian from the inn where they'd all stayed.

  Ry saw the pain in his brother's eyes in the instant when he first saw Kait with Ry and noted their arms around each other; he hid it quickly and completely, but Ry knew Ian still loved her. His jumbled emotional response to that knowledge surprised him he felt triumph and jealousy and fierce possessiveness and a sharp stab of guilt, all at once. More than that, however, he felt a deep, quiet current of love for his brother something he would never have expected he could feel. They had been through so much together, and at every turn Ian had deferred to Ry. Now, finally, Ry could do something for Ian.

  By way of greeting, Ry told Ian, "I brought something back for you from my travels, brother." He did not use the formal, Family term for brother, sibarru, but the informal and affectionate boshu.

  Ian looked surprised. "Considering the troubles you faced on the trip, I'm surprised you found time to think of me."

  Ry shrugged, suddenly awkward at having to express this newfound affection for Ian. "You've become a real brother to me." He looked away, and said with a gruffness that attempted to mask embarrassment, and probably failed, "We must be going. Come I'll give you what I found."

  He would never forget the moment when they stepped onto the dock together and Ian's eyes focused on the refurbished Peregrine sitting at anchor in the bay and his mouth dropped open. Ian turned and stared at Ry, then looked back at his ship. "Where... ?" His face was pale as death, his eyes glittered, and for a moment Ry feared that Ian might topple to the dock in a dead faint. But he said, "You brought her to me?"

  "Your ship. And Rrru-eeth. She's in the brig. The crew helped me win the Peregrine back for you they're your people now. Captain."

  Ian's lips pressed together in a thin line, and his eyes glittered with unshed tears. He rested a hand on his brother's upper arm and squeezed. "Thank you," he said softly.

  Ry only nodded the words he had thought he would say when he presented his brother with his ship fell away and left him mute.

  The crew standing by the longboat for the final trip out to the ship were the survivors from the mutiny of the Peregrine. Each of them bowed deeply and formally when Ian entered the longboat, and the first mate, Bemyar, hugged him and whispered, "He paid more than you know to bring her back to you," into Ian's ear. Ry's Karnee hearing caught the words easily, but he gave no sign. "We tried to kill him and his friends, thinking they meant to aid her in getting her way in Calimekka we did kill one of them. He forgave us and worked with us. For your sake."

  Ian's face betrayed nothing, but his soft response "Thank you for telling me. I didn't know"betrayed an intensity Ry had only thought his brother possessed in relation to Kait.

  Ian strode back to the longboat's tiller and displaced the man sitting there. When Dùghall, the last passenger to board, took a seat on the thwart, Ian put a hand to the tiller and said, "Take us home, men."

  And the men said, "Yes, Captain," and dug in with a will.

  In the instant he regained his ship, Ian changed. The bitterness he had carried since Ry rescued him from Novtierra fell away. His eyes looked clearer, his head lifted, and the faintest of smiles curved at the corners of his mouth.

  Ry knew what they still faced he knew that likely the only fate they would find in Calimekka would be death. But for the first time since Ry had known his half-brother, he saw Ian as an equal and understood both the power Ian held and the loyalty he had earned.

  The trip had cost him his friend Jaim. He could not forget that, though he truly had forgiven the men who thought only to serve Ian. But Ry realized in that moment that it had won him a brother who was family, too, and not merely Family and that was something he had never had.

  * * *

  Kait didn't know the boy who stood outside the door of the cabin she shared with Ry. He was one of the crew that Rrru-eeth had hired on to replace those killed or abandoned for dead in Novtierra. Thin, waifish, and poorly dressed, he didn't look like he had profited from the riches that had spilled over onto the mutineers. He stared up at her with wide, worried eyes.

  "What do you want, boy?" she asked, but kindly.

  "Your uncle sends an important message. He requests you meet him in his cabin as soon as you can." He glanced over his shoulder, then back to her. "He's really your uncle, the themmuburra Dùghall?"

  "My mother's older brother."

  "Then you are a themmuburra, too," he whispered. He quickly kissed her hand and ducked his head to his knees in a low Imumbarran bow. Then, without looking back up at her, he turned and fled.

  Ry had come up behind her. "And that was... ?" he asked.

  "One of Uncle Dùghall's worshipers," Kait said softly. "They show up in the strangest places."

  "He really is a god in the islands?"

  "Fertility god." Kait went to the cabin wardrobe, and pulled out the only really decent outfit she had, and started putting it on. "Forty years ago, the birth rate in the islands had fallen far below the death rate. The men fathered no children, the women were barren. The Imumbarrans prayed that they be delivered from extinction and then Uncle Dùghall was assigned to the islands as part of his diplomatic rotation. He... got along well with the natives. And he apparently produced a few miracles for the girls he got along well with. So young husbands sent their wives to him, and they became pregnant, too. And then more came, and they went home happy." She pulled her tunic over her head and tugged the beaded belt into place. "He was the answer to the islanders' prayers which was the answer to Galweigh House's prayers. In exchange for his services, which he apparently enjoyed rendering, we received exclusive trade with the islands, and first pick of all the caberra they grew. Then, when the first of the daughters born to Dùghall reached the age of childbearing, the islanders discovered that she could be fertile with an Imumbarran. The other daughters were, too. Dùghall's miracle was complete. At that point they declared him a god." Kait shrugged. "He has hundreds of children. By now, perhaps thousands. Uncountable grandchildren. In another generation, most of the people in the islands will be related to him to some degree. And all of them seem to have inherited the Galweigh fertility."

  "They breed like rabbits."

  Kait sighed. "Yes. In a few more years they'll be everywhere."

  Ry laughed. "Think how the islanders will react when Dùghall returns to them as a young man."

  Kait laughed, too, but then she shook her head. "He doesn't have any reason to go back anymore. There is no Galweigh House in Calimekka for him to represent."

  "He could go back to be with his family."

  "I've never gotten the feeling that it worked that way... that there was much feeling of family involved in his... duties. He talks about his children, and I've met any number of my cousins when he brought them to the city for visits, but Dùghall was never really a father to them. Their mothers always had Imumbarran husbands, and their husbands raised the children as their own. My cousins called Dùghall 'father' while they were visiting with us, but I didn't learn until years later that the word they used when they spoke to him in Imumbarran was the formal one, ebemurr or that the word children affectionately call their fathers in the Imumbarras is peba." She finished dressing and quickly brushed her hair. "I don't think anybody ever called him peba. And I think he's felt the lack of that his whole life."

  "That's rather sad."

  "It is. I have always suspected that he looked on me as a replacement for the children he fathered but didn't get to keep."

  She and Ry tapped on Dùghall's door only a few moments later. He greeted them with a grim expression, ushered them into the cabin with some haste, and bade them be seated. He was pale, Kait noticed, his eyes were red-rimmed, and he smelled of grief and despair.

  Kait looked past the lavish decorations of the room to Dùghall's zanda, spread out on the room's little table with its coins scattered in a pattern that meant nothing to her, and she felt her heart skip a b
eat.

  "I apologize to you both for calling you away from your other activities," Dùghall said. He carried himself like a man who had been told he must die the next day. "You have had only a little time to be together, but what I have to tell the two of you must not wait any longer." When they took the two seats beside the table, he turned away from them to stare out the room's tiny porthole.

  Kait watched him, hating his stillness and the cloud of doom that emanated from him.

  "You finally got the answer to your auguring," she said.

  "Yes."

  "You know the choice that you will have to make when the moment comes."

  "Yes."

  Kait reached for Ry's hand under the table, and held it tightly.

  Ry said, "Kait told me about the oracles you sought. About the confusing answer you received."

  Dùghall turned and faced the two of them. "It is no longer confusing. It has become terribly clear."

  "And... ?"

  "And I am Vodor Imrish's sword. I have sworn my life to serve him, to serve the Falcons, to serve the good of the world. I am making that choice now."

  Kait felt a soft burning on her instep, where she had been branded by the Falcons. In the back of her mind, like the tugging of the moon on the tide, she felt them pulling on her. She, too, was a Falcon different, apart, but still sworn to serve. Listen, they were telling her. Listen.

  Dùghall, still staring out the porthole, said, "Luercas approaches with allies so numerous they make the earth tremble when they move; with magic honed during a thousand years of waiting; with an appetite that will devour the world. Every zanda I have cast in these last few days has been clear about one thing we cannot beat him in a straight fight. Even if we could get all of the Falcons banded together and hit him force against force, he would still annihilate us."

  Kait nodded. "We suspected as much. Tell us what you know."

  "That we will die," he said quietly. "But we will try to do it in such a way that the world will survive behind us."

  Kait and Ry both grew very still at those words so still that Kait was uncertain if either she or Ry still breathed. Or could. They both waited for Dùghall to qualify his statement, to give them some hope, to offer anything beyond that flat statement of their coming death. But he said nothing.

  Finally Ry said, "You mean we may die, don't you? I mean, you cannot be certain of the outcome until we fight our fight "

  But Dùghall shook his head. "I am certain. I have entreated Vodor Imrish himself for a path that did not end in our certain death... and there is none. If our world is to live, the three of us will die together."

  Kait gripped Ry's hand harder, and felt his fingers tighten around hers. She turned to him and said, "I'm sorry I cost us the last real time we could have had together." She moved around the table and dropped to her knees, resting her head against his chest. She could feel his heart pounding beneath her cheek; she could hear the smooth, sweet sound of the air moving in and out of his lungs. She could smell his pain, his grief, his longing for her. He held her; one hand to stroke her hair, one arm to pull her close.

  "From the time we knew who Luercas was, we thought this might be our fate. The only thing that has changed is that now we know. Don't waste the little time we have left in this life blaming yourself, Kait. You were no more wrong than I was. I'm sorry I left."

  Kait wiped at her cheeks, startled to find that they were wet; she had not realized she was crying. She felt almost as if she were outside of her body as if already she were moving toward the Veil and the next life.

  Ry rested a hand on her chin and gently turned her back to face him. "We will die together," he said. "And beyond the Veil, we will live together again. I did not find you at last and after such difficulty to let such a small thing as death separate us. You and I are forever."

  She gripped his hands in hers. "Promise me," she said fiercely. "You said you would never leave me again."

  "I promise. Not in life, not in death, not beyond eternity."

  "Nor I, you."

  Something was wrong with Dùghall. Kait could sense it, and when she turned away from Ry, she could see it. She could almost smell it. His cheeks were streaked with tears, his eyes would not meet hers, his hands gripped each other as if fighting for their lives. He was hiding something something important.

  "What are you not telling us?" she asked.

  "The... sacrifice of our lives... it is only the beginning," Dùghall said. His voice shook.

  Kait shook her head. "What more can the gods ask of us than our lives?"

  "In order to have any chance to win against Luercas, we are going to have to draw him into the Veil and beat him there. Any Falcons who join us in Galweigh House will create the shield that will protect the rest of Calimekka. But we three will be unshielded. I am the only one strong enough to draw Luercas into the Veil against his will and hold him there, but I cannot both hold him and fight him at the same time. You and Ry share a bond that is beyond my understanding you can communicate with each other without effort, without words, and without resorting to magic. Because of this, only the two of you may hope to draw him into the trap that I will build to capture him." Dùghall stared down at his feet and whispered, "But by the very nature of that trap, the two of you will only be able to pull him in if you go with him."

  "Into the trap."

  Dùghall nodded.

  "And what will be in the trap?" Ry asked. "How are our souls to escape once they have entered?"

  "They aren't." Dùghall sighed. "Inside the trap will be oblivion. Annihilation." He shook his head, and his hands twisted against each other, endlessly moving. "He would find his way free of any trap that had a way out sooner or later, he would return to the world, and resume his destruction of it and the people in it. So his soul must die."

  Kait said, "But destroying souls that is what the Dragons do."

  "Yes. And no. The Dragons use the souls of others to pay the price for their magic. We are Falcons, and will not follow that path."

  Ry said, "You're saying that we will pay for our magic with our own souls."

  "That is the Falcon way," Dùghall said.

  Kait finally understood. "If we do as you ask, Ry and I will go into the trap with Luercas. And with Luercas, we will cease to exist. Forever."

  Dùghall finally looked into her eyes. "If you do this thing, there will be no second chances for you, no meetings beyond the Veil, no rebirth." He sat on the edge of his bunk, his movements so loose-jointed and weak that it seemed more a collapse than any intentional movement. He gripped his knees and closed his eyes tightly. "This was the meaning of the terrible oracle that I cast. I cannot give my own soul to win this fight if I could, I would. You and you alone can do this thing that will save our world. Two souls to save the millions born and yet to be born, and the billions trapped and held in pain and madness for a thousand years."

  "And what of the fact that we are Karnee?" Ry snarled. "What of the fact that those we will give lives and souls and eternity to save would kill us and cheer our deaths if they knew what we were?"

  Dùghall said, "If you yearn for revenge against all those who persecute the Karnee, you couldn't find a more permanent kind than to walk away from this thing I ask of you."

  "I yearn for an eternity with my Kait," Ry said bitterly.

  "I know. If you walk away, perhaps you could somehow have it. You might hope to escape Luercas. Certainly you would have each other longer than you will if you do what I must ask of you."

  Kait looked into Ry's eyes and saw her own pain and despair and disbelief mirrored there. That they faced death yes, she had already found a way to deal with that. But that they faced oblivion...

  Ry's mind touched hers. That subtle bond, strengthened and refined by their time apart, filled her with his love, and with ironic acknowledgment; the bond they shared was the very thing that would, if they chose to fight Luercas, consign them to oblivion. No one else could do what they did. No one else could repla
ce them. If they refused, there would be no brave replacements to step into their places and fight in their stead.

  She touched his thoughts with pictures of all the things they would be giving up, not just for this one lifetime, but for eternity. Laughter and music, the sweet scent of the wind blowing across a sun-warmed meadow, the touch of warm rain on skin, the taste of a fresh-picked berry. They would never have children together; they would never grow old together; they would never fight again, nor would they ever again cherish the pleasure of making up. For them, all of those things would cease to exist. They would cease to exist. It was unthinkable and yet it was the path they were being asked to take.

  Dùghall had once quoted Vincalis to Kait, and the words came back to her in that moment: Men forge swords of steel and fire; gods forge swords of flesh and blood and tragedy.